“E! You give me hikapent, then, I give you punkin.” She concedes, with an air of reckless kindness, and a hope of sixpence-worth of topeka to be purchased presently on the sly from Wirimu, the gardener.
But “I don’t care much for pumpkins,” says the stupid pakeha. “And I haven’t any hikapeni,” she adds. The stingy thing! A fish? why, the creature is nothing at all but an empty cockle-shell not worth the digging. And Pipi is just thinking that she shall soon feel too tired to walk a single step farther, when, suddenly producing a small, sweetly-familiar-looking packet from her coat, “You like cigarettes?” inquires the pakeha.
“Ai! Homai te hikarete! Ka pat te hikarete! (“Yes! Give me a cigarette! I do like cigarettes),” cries Pipi, enraptured, and the pakeha holds out the packet. Alas! there are only two cigarettes left in it, and manners will permit of Pipi’s taking only one. This is very trying. “You smoke?” she asks innocently. The girl denies it, of course, as Pipi knew she would: these pakeha women always do, and Miria, their slavish advocate and copyist, declares they speak the truth. Vain words; for, in the hotel at Rotorua, has not Pipi seen the very best attired of them at it? Moreover, why should this girl trouble to carry cigarettes if she does not smoke, herself? Plenty stupid, these pakeha women! Plenty good, however, their cigarettes, and greed (oh Miria!) overcoming manners, “E! You not smoke; you give me other hikaret’, then,” she says boldly.
This miserable pakeha, however, proves to be as a pig, that, full of feed, yet stands with both feet
